Mynna has decided to stand down after two years on the CSM and I have been asked to stand for election.

If any of you have any barrels that need pork or babies that need kissed then the party machine starts here.

From my announcement to the alliance (available here):

Quote

"We in Goonswarm have always prided ourselves on the transparency of our democratic process. Nothing is hidden from the line member or the outsider about the subtle checks and balances that make sure that too much power is never concentrated in the hands of anyone who is not called The Mittani.

I was therefore the proudest Goon in my whole house when I was awoken by a call I received around 0430 on Sunday morning. A voice suspiciously like that of Dear Leader in falsetto said “I have The President of the CFC on the line for you with an important message.” Naturally I got out of bed and stood to attention before responding.

The familiar voice could now be heard from the other end of the line. After a short preamble of no more than twelve or thirteen minutes largely on the subject of “The Mittani”, he swiftly came to the point. “Your application for the post of alliance CSM candidate has been successful. You may inform your wife and colleagues immediately.”

I could not have been more delighted nor amazed. “My application was successful? And to think I didn’t even know that I had applied!” I’m not going to lie to you, it came as the biggest surprise to me since the time Mittens informed me that my application to manually fit one thousand seven hundred frigates ahead of the 2011 newbie drive had been successful.

Anyway, Mynnna has decided, after a year successfully representing not just Goonswarm but also many other areas of the Eve community, that he has had enough of rude and abrupt proto-Scandinavians and has elected to step down. I will endeavour to persuade you that you should vote for me for this year’s election, initially through reasoned argument and easy accessibility, but later, and in desperation, through the Avalloc method of promising to personally demand of CCP that every request made of me be enforced, no matter how borderline lunatic or even downright treasonous it may be.

There is an outside chance that Walter Stine, another Bat Country member, may be standing on behalf of PL. It's complicated, ok?

I'd like "empire" split up with Safe NPC areas in deep 0.0 to allow logistics to flourish for people. The deep eastern side of the map must be pure hell to live in as the lines of supply from Empire must be utter shite to run. Having 0.5 space in deep 0.o would allow mission runners and high sec ice miners to settle there and make things easier for those living in o,o, and make people spread out from the firestorm around the empire Areas. In theory.

Splitting up the NPC empires with areas of O.o in between them would make it more interesting, and make the map more clumpy and spread people out some more, in theory. You might need a corridor of safe passage in between them. But CCP has been expanding the map eastwards for years, and ignoring the western edge of the map which is 0.o space that's all close to empire.

They may have added more in the west that I don't know about, but seriously, the map looks totally lopsided.

1. Roaming resources: The moon goo, the anoms, everything flips from one side of the map to the other every year, forcing alliances (big or small) to chase the resources, and thus causing more big wars between alliances.

2. Sov. islands: Islands of space (constellations?) that can be claimed via sovereignty to allow setting up outposts and manufacturing the big ships, but with no resources. The surrounding space (the sea between the islands) has all the resources but cannot be claimed via sovereignty, allowing skirmishes between neighbors, and also "defend your industrialists" behavior.

I'll just get on one of my soapboxes here, but I have chatted to a surprising amount of bittervets in the last few days who have fucked back to empire as they are sick of the whole null sec thing. But its caused a few things to crystalise in my own head. So in true F13 fashion, I;ll just vomit out a few of my half formed idea and have everyone laugh at them.

YOu said that you want more people in Null forming small states and whatnot and challanging the big powers. But to to that people have to have the CAPABILITY of challenging the big powers and that means to have some form of half decent economic muscle behind them. In a fully designed system that muscle would be built up in low sec, where in exchange for some risk people could suck up sweet cash.

In reality thats not the case at all. In high sec people are constantly harassed by idiot wardeccing griefers, and unlike other MMOs your death is permanent so you have to grind AGAIN to get that Battleship whereas the griefer suffers no damage at all. And there is the stupid can swipers and what not.

And then you get to low sec. Lowsec 0.4 is a Penis, and 0.3 and below its a penis with razorblades, and both ready to bugger you.

Lets face facts. Low sec is exactly like Null except without the rewards. Anyone trying to move into lowsec gets treated to constant fucking harassment, has to keep vigilance all the fucking time to splat pirates and Null sec fueled griefers, probably only has cruisers and is fighting T2 fitted dicks with potential cap fleets and Titans. And the result? People trying to get started in order to become a potential Null sec power just fucking bleed cash and effort to just stay afloat, and even if they somehow manage to survive all that there is no way they can build up a half decent cash flow to even think about striking out for Null. You want people to make a play for null? The people who would potentially do just that, make tracks to Low sec get raped over a fire and just quit the game right there.

I speak from experience as I was in low sec for a year and a half and it was a year and a half of fucking hell.

And its a situation that exists because CCP suck ass at balancing their experience and they just had a "fuck it it ain't broke, lets not fix it. Hey here's a video of Null sec!" I know a certain stretch of people would say "har har if they cant handle it they shouldn't try"

Frankly, my solution? Make high sec totally safe. You cant loot other peoples cans AT ALL, meaning they are flagged as non interactive in high sec. That eliminates the stupid can flagging rules which don't stop people from harassing empire miners and mission runners anyway. I'd even go so far as to have wardecs have no effect in 0.7 and above. Once you go to low sec their is no concord but there ARE Empire police forces that act the same way, with decreasing power as you go down the scale. Right now gate guns are a fucking joke, pirate camps basically ignore them. If you use the empire forces people could potentially tank their damage by hypertanking, but that works both ways so if the grieved use the non empire damage against the pirates they will rape their ass. Yes people will scream "RISK VS REWARD AAAA" But that's the problem; right now low sec is all risk and fuck all reward, and its the hunting ground of rich asshole null seccers with psychotic tendencies. Hell all the moons that are supposed to be for low seccers to take to generate cash are all taken by Null sec people.

Give vunerable low sec people a bit of protection and they pill be knocking on your door in no time.

People still use the term griefer? Eve is about conflict, those who do not adapt die out, or become stronger. Low sec without rewards? FW is clearly very rewardable. You just don't get eve as a game, its supposed to be harsh.CCP will never make high sec safe, other players containers will always be takeable from [do you even know about suspect status these days?]. With the fw lp, clone soldiers, custom offices, relic sites, mordu's in belts frankly low sec isn't as bad as it used to be. I personally think that you should stop trying to push eve into your own demographic which quite frankly is a rather carebear way and try to work around the fact that eve will never be a wow friendly type of game. Hell CCP are already getting rid of clone costs, is it a good idea? Maybe. People who wardec other corporations, can easily get beaten, they don't risk their ships? Of course they do. If a corporation cannot stand up against wardecs then they will have no chance in null-sec [or certainly a very poor chance of doing so].

There are those who learn and those who don't. Those who learn succeed, those that don't, don't. Low sec people protection? You clearly don't know what low sec is about, no CSM guy is going to be seriously considered if they put forward your ideas. I would suggest you get into a decent corp, try FW or something like that, because something is telling me is that 'you do not get it'. Your ideas would kill eve, no question. I personally think that to challenge established null sec entities, you need new tools and new gameplay, like destructible stargates, those mobile siphons that take moon minerals. New ways of engaging in economic warfare. People can always just join an established group and then split from it, when they have grown strong enough.

Now in deference to the original poster, I personally would like some more exploration type stuff to do, because it is quite popular with me and with others. Maybe scanning asteroids with an analyser tool, for hidden stuff, drones that come out of them. Maybe some hidden sites [since odyssey made things not so hidden] in the depths far from planets, oort cloud areas in all systems, beyond the planets, where people can fight one another freely without concord intervention [get the same this area is dangerous warning as you would from entering low/null sec for the first time].

You have some reasonable points. However, I don't think you should write off Sir T's experience with EVE. He has far more experience than some people might assume.

Sure maybe Im being harsh, but there are some people who have played eve for years and don't actually understand what it is supposed to be, his point about being able to challenge existing null-sec alliances may be valid, but you get a contradiction about protecting people and then those protected people trying to be null-sec entities. In the end it just doesn't fly, as eve is about conflict.

Frankly, my solution? Make high sec totally safe. You cant loot other peoples cans AT ALL, meaning they are flagged as non interactive in high sec. That eliminates the stupid can flagging rules which don't stop people from harassing empire miners and mission runners anyway.

The first CSM to put this forward was Jade Constantine, so you're already in poor company there with that argument.

I'm going to preface my response - I no longer gank people in high sec, before anyone chimes in.

I would counter your point and say you are totally safe in hi sec - but it's your job to ensure your own safety, you autopilot a shuttle from Jita to Amarr 1 million times you'll never see anything. You do the same in a 1 bil untanked hauler, you will die more often than not. I enjoy that everytime I undock in hisec I have the inner dialogue - do we have any wars? - can I autopilot safely with this fit or cargo? I have a blockade runner and 500m in loot, how tanky am I? am I worth ganking with a single Attack BC? Bollox, I have to manually pilot while cloaking at each gate. Everything worthwhile you do needs to be planned with military precision, you become a party to the metagame. Some masochists, like myself, find that rewarding.

« Last Edit: December 01, 2014, 04:09:20 PM by Amarr HM »

I'm going to escape, come back, wipe this place off the face of the Earth, obliterate it and you with it.

And the problem is that Low sec has all of the grief and all of the risk and none of the rewards. I've read through all the responses and none of you addressed that.

And people like that because low sec provides weak people to gank and to torment. And that is shitty game design if you WANT people moving into nullsec. Which WILL provide the conflict people CLAIM they like but really deep down don't.

Eve is a game. That people pay for. If CCP wants to RETAIN people and actually have them moving onto Null sec then they have to address that. Eve was conceived as a game there you co-operate and discover. Instead it became a game about tormenting people. Have you ever sat mining at a belt with a fucking idiot trying to trick you into shooting him with your drones by sitting on your jetcan or bumping you so you will be concorded ? I have, when I was a member of Eve University, which is SUPPOSED to be for new people. How the hell is that "conflict?" How the hell is that encouraging people to stay with your game and easing, yes EASING them into the conflicts of low sec and null? It isn't. One or 2 mining barges lost that way and people will simply quit. Which will make the tormenters laugh but that's another potential null sec player lost.

High sec is massively overcrowded because people cant get out of it. Low sec is the fucking death of any arguments about "Risk Vs Reward" in the game.

*edit* And I know you will say "well if they cant hack low sec they will never hack Null" and to that I sad BULL-SHIT and posit you have never had to live in low sec. When I got into null it was a fucking cake walk compared with Low sec. I know that blows your minds but there it is.

I played Eve for 5 years without ever spending one second longer in low-sec than I had to. Besides transiting to and from null space, the only thing that would bring me out there was if some idiot had underpriced Capital Ship bits at a null-sec staging point. Low-sec always struck me as completely pointless, all the danger of null and none of the rewards.

While I understand that it was a stupid and pointless hobby. I used to fly around lowsec hot spots in a covops watching the hopeless get ganked. I was a filthy voyeur. Nobody in their right mind spends any time in lowsec trying to actually accomplish stuff.

"See? All of you are unique. And special. Like fucking snowflakes." -- Signe

I'll just get on one of my soapboxes here, but I have chatted to a surprising amount of bittervets in the last few days who have fucked back to empire as they are sick of the whole null sec thing. But its caused a few things to crystalise in my own head. So in true F13 fashion, I;ll just vomit out a few of my half formed idea and have everyone laugh at them.

YOu said that you want more people in Null forming small states and whatnot and challanging the big powers. But to to that people have to have the CAPABILITY of challenging the big powers and that means to have some form of half decent economic muscle behind them. In a fully designed system that muscle would be built up in low sec, where in exchange for some risk people could suck up sweet cash.

In reality thats not the case at all. In high sec people are constantly harassed by idiot wardeccing griefers, and unlike other MMOs your death is permanent so you have to grind AGAIN to get that Battleship whereas the griefer suffers no damage at all. And there is the stupid can swipers and what not.

And then you get to low sec. Lowsec 0.4 is a Penis, and 0.3 and below its a penis with razorblades, and both ready to bugger you.

Lets face facts. Low sec is exactly like Null except without the rewards. Anyone trying to move into lowsec gets treated to constant fucking harassment, has to keep vigilance all the fucking time to splat pirates and Null sec fueled griefers, probably only has cruisers and is fighting T2 fitted dicks with potential cap fleets and Titans. And the result? People trying to get started in order to become a potential Null sec power just fucking bleed cash and effort to just stay afloat, and even if they somehow manage to survive all that there is no way they can build up a half decent cash flow to even think about striking out for Null. You want people to make a play for null? The people who would potentially do just that, make tracks to Low sec get raped over a fire and just quit the game right there.

I speak from experience as I was in low sec for a year and a half and it was a year and a half of fucking hell.

And its a situation that exists because CCP suck ass at balancing their experience and they just had a "fuck it it ain't broke, lets not fix it. Hey here's a video of Null sec!" I know a certain stretch of people would say "har har if they cant handle it they shouldn't try"

Frankly, my solution? Make high sec totally safe. You cant loot other peoples cans AT ALL, meaning they are flagged as non interactive in high sec. That eliminates the stupid can flagging rules which don't stop people from harassing empire miners and mission runners anyway. I'd even go so far as to have wardecs have no effect in 0.7 and above. Once you go to low sec their is no concord but there ARE Empire police forces that act the same way, with decreasing power as you go down the scale. Right now gate guns are a fucking joke, pirate camps basically ignore them. If you use the empire forces people could potentially tank their damage by hypertanking, but that works both ways so if the grieved use the non empire damage against the pirates they will rape their ass. Yes people will scream "RISK VS REWARD AAAA" But that's the problem; right now low sec is all risk and fuck all reward, and its the hunting ground of rich asshole null seccers with psychotic tendencies. Hell all the moons that are supposed to be for low seccers to take to generate cash are all taken by Null sec people.

Give vunerable low sec people a bit of protection and they pill be knocking on your door in no time.

I'll break up answering this into a couple of posts since it kinda rambles back and forth a bit so I couldn't find a way to break up the quoting.

Lowsec is pretty vibrant these days: there is a huge amount of fighting - it is where Bat Country goes on holiday to find fights - and although Factional Warfare is imbalanced due to everyone always wanting to join the winners, people are at least making lots of money there. I’m not saying by any means that it is the finished article, but I think it is many years since the situation that SirT describes was the case. And making it safer seems counter-intuitive.

I certainly don’t think that pockets of highsec out in nullsec are a good idea, either. But what I think would be good would be additional pockets of NPC space in the east. Innominate provided a heat map, recently, that showed the number of jumps from NPC space for every nullsec system, and in the south-east the minimum path length was huge, while the west is liberally strewn with NPC space (in Fountain, Delve, Pure Blind, Outer Ring and Venal that I can think of, offhand).

And the problem is that Low sec has all of the grief and all of the risk and none of the rewards. I've read through all the responses and none of you addressed that.

This is just nonsense: nullsec people have lowsec alts to do Factional Warfare for cash. Your argument on lowsec is pretty much the reverse of reality. In addition, Level 5 missions occur in lowsec and it is surprisingly difficult to catch a carrier doing one of these missions, so they get run a good bit.

On the idea that people need to transition from highsec to nullsec through lowsec: this isn't true. To my (admittedly anecdotal) knowledge virtually nobody in the big nullsec empires lived in lowsec for any amount of time, although some return to lowsec after losing space on occasion so as to rebuild and make money. In general, lowsec attracts a different sort of player who wants different things from Eve, and making it more like highsec or more like nullsec will not help them.

On highsec, I think you’re a bit out of touch on that, too: the criminal flagging system changed radically and there have been a huge succession of nerfs (the latest of which is to remove the ability to shoot corp members without consequence in highsec). Basically, Eve highsec is very safe unless someone is pretty dumb, these days, and there are safety locks on guns that have to be manually removed, complete with warnings, before someone can get themselves baited. Not to mention enhanced concord, the outlawing of ganking tricks and so forth. As Amarr HM says, unless you are hauling recklessly vast amounts of wealth in a hauler (because you are too lazy to make two trips and decided to roll the dice) or have made your missioning raven into an officer spawn with your fit then you’re very safe in Empire.

Finally, I agree about the problem you mention regarding new players in nullsec being unable to survive against the big boys. Thus why my articles stress that it should be extremely hard to remove space from anyone who turns up and fights for it.

1. Roaming resources: The moon goo, the anoms, everything flips from one side of the map to the other every year, forcing alliances (big or small) to chase the resources, and thus causing more big wars between alliances.

2. Sov. islands: Islands of space (constellations?) that can be claimed via sovereignty to allow setting up outposts and manufacturing the big ships, but with no resources. The surrounding space (the sea between the islands) has all the resources but cannot be claimed via sovereignty, allowing skirmishes between neighbors, and also "defend your industrialists" behavior.

I hate the idea of the first idea: it comes up quite a bit and underestimates how many players unsubscribe every time an alliance moves space, and how many are screwed over and never come back if they happened to be unsubbed or away/deployed IRL etc at the time of the move. It also sucks because logistics are horrible but that's at least not game-threatening.

The second idea sounds quite fun if you make the resources valuable enough and make the space affected far enough away from everyone else: maybe in "Wormhole clusters": pockets of K-Space only accessible via wormholes? Seagull has trailed something not dissimilar from this, judging from the initial overview.

On the idea that people need to transition from highsec to nullsec through lowsec: this isn't true. To my (admittedly anecdotal) knowledge virtually nobody in the big nullsec empires lived in lowsec for any amount of time, although some return to lowsec after losing space on occasion so as to rebuild and make money. In general, lowsec attracts a different sort of player who wants different things from Eve, and making it more like highsec or more like nullsec will not help them.

As you yourself note, the fact that you don't know anyone that tried to form live and exploit low sec does not necessarily mean that no-one tries. he other interpretation is that the people that tried wound up quitting, whcih should concern you if you want the game to retain players.. And its only natural that people would view low sec as a stepping stone to null, because quite frankly that's the only logical reason for low sec to exist. If it does not then Low sec serves no purpose and the whole design is insane. Designing something like that would be totally daft, so people don't believe that low sec is really Null sec with crap gate guns, crap ores and rats and no bubbles till they experience it for themselves.

In the area I was living in, Solitude, there was 3 low sec alliances trying to exploit low sec to grow and then move to null sec. Every one of them failed. Hell before moving to Solitude we tried settling in a system in The Forge and within a week the place was Pirate central. (Yes I know that Solitude was next to Syndicate. It does not change the fact that the other place BECAME pirate central because we settled there.)

I know I have never run with Faction Warfare so I don't know how that has changed things. I may give it a try and see if it has significantly changed Low sec, but I doubt it. Remember you are looking at low sec from the filtered gaze of never having lived there nor really spoken to people with experiance of living there. You might suggest the CSM interview people who do or have lived there, because the CSM really only seems to look at High sec and null, but never Low Sec.

In fact, if you still feel that Low Sec is perfectly fine after that then you should tell them just eliminate low sec entirely and have every one of the low sec areas be classed as NPC null sec. At least it would be honest. And yeah I know that the first thing that would happen is that all the gates would be bubbled to fuck unless bubbles were eliminated in the code. The resulting outcry might actually tell CCP to put something SANE in low sec rather than have the area be a gigantic confidence trick. Who knows?

On the idea that people need to transition from highsec to nullsec through lowsec: this isn't true. To my (admittedly anecdotal) knowledge virtually nobody in the big nullsec empires lived in lowsec for any amount of time, although some return to lowsec after losing space on occasion so as to rebuild and make money. In general, lowsec attracts a different sort of player who wants different things from Eve, and making it more like highsec or more like nullsec will not help them.

As you yourself note, the fact that you don't know anyone that tried to form live and exploit low sec does not necessarily mean that no-one tries.

I didn't say any such thing. I said that the nullsec players I know didn't transition through lowsec. I know plenty of people who have lived in lowsec. Bat Country lives there for months out of every year.

Anyway I pointed out the various reasons why your analysis was a good few years out of date. Go and see why everyone and their dog has a FW alt. Look at CCP's stats on the busiest PvP systems and so on.

Edit: what year are you talking about exactly with your Solitude anecdote?

Also I just remembered that Fweddit started in FW Lowsec before joining us, and that they stayed in FW for quite a long time after getting nullsec space (they may still be, I dunno). That may count, although they were originally mainly alts of nullsec players, often in test, who wanted access to the riches of lowsec.